Scott Baigent and Cameron Wallace, partners in Cork's 8 Degrees Brewing Co, always knew what they wanted to do when they set up their brewery in a quiet little industrial park in Mitchelstown.
“We were very clear about what we were looking for”, says Baigent. And what was that? “A modern Irish identity”, he replies. But hang on: isn't beer part of the old Irish identity, that milieu of Percy French songs, the Farmer's Journal, nicotined pub ceilings, toasted sandwiches, and a barman who always knows the winner of the Cheltenham Champion Hurdle?
Not for this antipodean pair – Mr Baigent is a Kiwi, Mr Mitchell an Aussie – and their outlier status has proffered them a different version of Irishness, one that is savvy, discriminating, fun. One that is modern, in a word. And that modern Irish person will, of course, be drinking an 8 Degrees Beer: Howling Gale Ale; Sunburnt Irish Red; Knockmealdown Porter, beautiful, modern drinks, brewed with precision and patience, and styled with modernist verve by Green Man studio.
Mr Baigent is an engineer by training, and studied hydrology, quite the thing when you are looking for the ideal water source with which to make your beer. The Galtee Mountains have done right by 8 Degrees, gifting then just the right sort of mineral mix to make the beers sparkle with liveliness. Fed up with the mass-produced rubbish found in every bar, Baigent and Mitchell began making their own beer domestically, and next thing you know, you've just bought a 1500 litre brewhouse from the Carlow Brewing Company. Just before production commenced, Baigent told John Wilson of The Irish Times, “We are living the dream”. Funny enough, one of their planned early brews, amidst a host of others, was called “Dreamtime Ale”. But rather than the calm of a dream, 8 Degrees have found themselves in the midst of a revolution, as business has exploded. Finally, the Irish have developed a taste for modernism.